Perfect Circles

My friend Kevin, who taught me how to properly (mountain and road) bike last summer, has a term he likes to use when talking about what it is we do with our legs while pushing pedals and turning wheels in service of truly badass forward momentum.

Here's my understanding:

It's not just about rotating tires, round and round, to propel you onward across the straights and up and down those hills. You're also working to make your heel revolve on its ankle fulcrum. There is a subtle, gentle pull up, and a smooth, undulating roll down, that together complete the gesture. You don't want to jab and kick at the bike with a series of movements that taken as one, form a right-angled rectangle. What you're trying to do is describe hemispheres with the machinery of your feet.

You're aspiring to perfect circles.

As some of you already know, this summer I'm going to ride the Tour of Courage in support of my former colleague Rich Wilkins and his current battle with cancer. The aforementioned Kevin will be kicking my ass in this race. As will the several other friends and colleagues who comprise our team. For this combined effort, we hope to raise money to aid cancer research and prevention.

If you're able, folks, I'm asking you to please chip in with a donation to help me reach (and surpass) my personal fundraising goal of a thousand clams. Any bit helps. Me, I aim to paint some perfect circles for Rich. Let's see what we can do together.

This is the link to my donations page: Reese Rides For Rich

And if you haven't seen the source site yet, here's Go Rich.